ok I feel a little silly asking this but what does ac stand for alternating current?

Quote:

Then, just enter whatever your AC wattage is into A1

I am not sure what you mean by this where do I find the AC . you see I am not running my folder yet but I am testing this energy monitor on my main PC so I do have some numbers but they are always changing. right now if I cycle through this monitor I see the W number which is jumping around between 123-125 and 12 column a1? if this is correct then then the answer is the cost aprox per month?
man I really wished that I learned how to use the software then I wouldn't feel so uneducated lol

Short version: AC watts = the watts pulled from the wall, as reported by your Kill-a-Watt. Insert this number into A1, then B1 will report your average monthly hydro cost for running the equipment.

Somewhat lengthier version: Yeah - so a computer uses DC power, which is why it needs a PSU: to convert AC power from the wall into DC power for the machine. There is a certain amount of power that is lost in this conversion (usually articulated as the efficiency rating of the PSU), so your AC wattage will be higher than your DC wattage. Since it's the AC wattage (i.e., the power from the wall) that affects your hydro bill, make sure to use that instead of any software-or-otherwise-derived measurement of DC power consumption. Hence the need for a Kill-a-Watt or similar AC measurement apparatus. This little gizmo might give you a few different metrics - volts, amps, etc. The one you want is watts. Note that it's normal for your AC wattage to jump around a bit. It can vary by as much as +/- 10% when under a seemingly consistent 100% folding load. Up to you if you want to use an estimated average based on the Kill-a-Watt read-outs or if you want to enter the peak wattage (this is what I do).

Short version: AC watts = the watts pulled from the wall, as reported by your Kill-a-Watt. Insert this number into A1, then B1 will report your average monthly hydro cost for running the equipment.

Somewhat lengthier version: Yeah - so a computer uses DC power, which is why it needs a PSU: to convert AC power from the wall into DC power for the machine. There is a certain amount of power that is lost in this conversion (usually articulated as the efficiency rating of the PSU), so your AC wattage will be higher than your DC wattage. Since it's the AC wattage (i.e., the power from the wall) that affects your hydro bill, make sure to use that instead of any software-or-otherwise-derived measurement of DC power consumption. Hence the need for a Kill-a-Watt or similar AC measurement apparatus. This little gizmo might give you a few different metrics - volts, amps, etc. The one you want is watts. Note that it's normal for your AC wattage to jump around a bit. It can vary by as much as +/- 10% when under a seemingly consistent 100% folding load. Up to you if you want to use an estimated average based on the Kill-a-Watt read-outs or if you want to enter the peak wattage (this is what I do).

Thank you for eplaining this to me
Wow I never thought that my PC is actually using DC instead of AC. kind of wished all things ran on DC.
I also didn't know that the "efficiency ratings of PSUs" actually meant that the higher efficiency the less power lost in the conversion from AC to DC . I think that it is time for me to look at better PSUs lol

It's amazing, actually, the difference a high efficiency unit can make with some of these ultra-high powered folding boxes that are humming along at 100% 24/7. Take my Quicksilver box for example, which uses about 800W of DC power when folding... using a Gold-rated PSU instead of a Bronze-rated one saves me just under 2 kWh per day, which is worth roughly $50 a year in hydro savings.

now is there a way for me to figure out a PSU I should grab that should be enough for folding . I mean I just grabbed any old PSU before but since I want to save on electricity how much power do I need for my folder setup ?

if we are talking about your 2P Opteron rig should be somewhere around 350W, also depending what graphics card you use. The TDP of Opteron 6128 is 115W so this is max wattage the CPU will consume, which i guess is the case when folding. Let's say it will consume 350W, keeping it on for 1 hour means it consumes 0.35kWh, multiplied by 24 is 8.4 and by 7 is 58.8. So it is 58.8 kwh/week,. multiply that with the cost of electricity in your province and you get the price of the consumed current fro the PSU. Of course you will have to add the percentage of efficiency of the PSU that is lost in conversion. let's say at 350W your PSU is 88% efficient you will have to add that to the price so let's say 10% more it will be around 63 kWh/week. If you want to minimize the costs it will be logic to invvest into a PSU that will have a very high efficiency, 80 Plus Gold or Platinum and the PSU will have to be chosen as the required load to be around 60% of its nominal power. For example you need 350W at full load, make it a 600W PSU. It happens that I use a 650W Antec Earth Watts Green on my Opteron 2P folder platform and at 400W load efficiency is a bit higher than 88%. Review here Antec Earthwatts EA 650W green Review | KitGuru
Attached you will find a document from Hydro Quebec with a comparison of electricity prices in North America as of 2011, residential consumers is at page 9.

This morning I did some calculations of GPU vs SMP folding costs based on the prices of a used GTX 570 at 200$ and a system with a core i7 2600k which came out at 500$, considering you find the CPU used at 275$. I considered the cycle as being 2 months, at least Hydro Quebec is doing the bill at 2 months, cost of electricity 7c/kWh, PSU efficiency 90% and folding done 24/7. The difference in cost for the i7 system will be offset after 23 cycles that means 46 months, almost 4 years. So you will have to keep your system 4 years just to cover the difference you paid in components versus a powerful graphics card. But if we consider the fact that the difference in PPD in favor of the CPU versus GPU would be 10k PPD (as the situation is today, considering folding under Windows) it would also mean that the CPU would give a 14 million points advantage.